The Best of the Best
20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction
20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction
The renowned sci-fi anthology presents a twenty-year retrospective featuring many of the genre’s most important authors: “The results are breathtaking.” —Booklist For decades, The Year’s Best Science Fiction has been the most widely read short science fiction anthology of its kind. Now, after twenty-one annual collections, comes the ultimate in science fiction anthologies, The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year’s Best Science Fiction, in which legendary editor Gardner Dozois selects the very best short stories for this landmark collection. Some notable stories include: “Coming of Age in Karhide” by Ursula K. Le Guin. The feminist science fiction pioneer returns to the world of her classic The Left Hand of Darkness. “The Winter Market” by William Gibson. Called the SF Timothy Leary of our times, Gibson returns to the subject that made him a cultural icon, cyberpunk. “Trinity” by Nancy Kress. The search for God is enhanced by cutting edge technology in this story from one of the anthology’s most frequent and admired contributors. Contributors include: Stephen Baxter * Greg Bear * William Bigson * Terry Bisson * Pat Cadigan * Ted Chiang * John Crowley * Tony Daniel * Greg Egan * Molly Gloss * Eileen Gunn * Joe Haldeman * James Patrick Kelly * John Kessel * Nancy Kress * Ursula K. Le Guin * Ian R. MacLeod * David Marusek * Paul McAuley * Ian McDonald * Maureen F. McHugh * Robert Reed * Mike Resnick * Geoff Ryman * William Sander * Lucius Shepard * Robert Silverberg * Brian Stableford * Bruce Sterling * Charles Stross * Michael Swanwick * Steven Utley * Howard Waldrop * Walter Jon Williams * Connie Willis * Gene Wolfe
Reviews with the most likes.
2 stars Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
Gardner Dozois' favorite stories from 20 years of his Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies.
Review
Subtitled 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction, the volume gives you a feeling for just how long Dozois had been doing this. And then realize there's also a later Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction. Impressive.
I've read several of Dozois' Year's Best over the years, most recently this one. I've never really cared for them much, and I've generally put it down to an off year, though with the suspicion that perhaps Dozois and I didn't agree. Having now read this volume – his best of the best – I can now definitively confirm the latter. While acknowledging that Dozois was a much-respected master anthologist in the field, I just don't like his taste.
Very few of these stories appealed to me, despite including at least some authors (such as Ursula Le Guin and Brian Stableford) that I generally enjoy. If this was a summary of 20 years of SF, the field was in a dire state during those years. I found the stories, as a rule, on the dull side, and it's not because I require fast-moving action and adventure. It's just that these stories generally neither engaged nor moved me. The writing is technically sound – as it should be at this level – but I seldom found myself caring much about what happened.
The exceptions – the more interesting stories – were largely and happily packed toward the back of the book, when I was most tired of it and most wanting it to end. They weren't enough to lift the anthology into the realms of books I enjoyed, but they gave me just enough hope to push through. They included:
